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Saturday, March 21, 2015

Jill Stein wins nomination without corporate control

Jill Stein clinched the Green party nomination earlier this month by campaigning at the grass roots level without taking record breaking amounts of bribes thinly disguised as campaign contributions. The following are a couple of the latest articles from her web site on the clinching of her nomination.

The Green Party's Jill Stein has clinched her party’s presidential nomination after celebrating a major victory in yesterday’s California primary, winning 49% of the vote against her chief contenders, television comedienne Roseanne Barr and public servant Kent Mesplay. The California win followed other recent Stein victories in Michigan, Florida, and Iowa.

With 182 delegates required to win the nomination, and 194 delegates now in hand, Stein will go into the Green Party convention in Baltimore, July 12-15, with a clear majority of delegates. She has won over 66% of all delegates allocated, and 27 of 29 Green Party primaries, with the next nearest candidate, Roseanne Barr, at 22%.

Stein, a medical doctor who once ran against Mitt Romney for Governor of Massachusetts, is proposing a Green New Deal for America that will create 25 million jobs, end unemployment, and transition our country to a green economy. Her proposals will also guarantee public higher education and Medicare for all, break up the big banks, and end corporate domination of elections.
"Voters will not be forced to choose between two servants of Wall Street in the upcoming election,” said Stein. “Now we know there will be a third candidate on the ballot who is a genuine champion of working people." …… Full article

If last week you were watching the Green Party for signs of progress, you would have seen us surging forward. Not only did Dr. Stein clinch the presidential nomination with her big win in California, but on Saturday she sealed the deal with 80% of the vote at the state convention of the Texas Greens. Stein has now won 203.5 of 304 delegates at the national convention. …… Full article

As I indicated in an earlier earlier Blog she did so despite the fact that the corporate media was giving much more coverage to her opponent, Roseanne Barr, often not even mentioning the fact that she was losing all along or even letting the public know that Jill Stein existed at all. The most recent article from the mainstream media, that I came across, Roseanne Barr not giving up Green Party campaign, doesn’t even present Jill Stein as the lead in the story; instead they focus primarily on Roseanne Barr, presumably because she is a celebrity and they don’t seem to provide nearly as much attention to people with grass roots support unless they’re already part of the celebrity class.

This clearly makes it much more difficult to gain any positive coverage from the corporate media based on real grass roots support based on taking the views of the public into consideration. Instead they only cover people with views that suit their purposes and some of Roseanne’s behavior during this campaign may have been somewhat absurd compared to the more serious and sincere positions that Jill Stein took on the issues which presumably enabled her to win the nomination. This should be considered a serious problem with the credibility of the corporate media; no sincere media outlet would ever do this if we truly had a free press. As I indicated when I took a closer look at Jill Stein, and her positions on the issues, it should be clear to many people that she is much more competent when it comes to addressing the issues than either of the two candidates that the corporate media present as “viable.”

It should be clear by now that what is required by the corporate media to become “viable” involves collecting an enormous amount of money that can only be obtained by the corporations that dominate politicians and corrupt the system. Furthermore, in order to collect money from the corporations they also have to have attention from the corporate media; which means these two things go hand in hand. This means that the same small number of people has authoritarian control over who can be considered a serious candidate for higher office and the vast majority of the public doesn’t have any sincere say at all.

This gives almost complete control of the government to the corporate interests who have been so accustomed to taking advantage of the majority of the public that they don’t seem to feel the need to even pretend to look out for the best interest of the public; or at least they don’t feel they have to do a good job pretending! On one issue after another they control both major candidate of any higher office with a significant amount of power and the only the majority of the public gets any more is an enormous amount of propaganda either by the traditional corporate media or in the form of campaign ads, neither of which are trying to inform the public about anything.

This is one of the biggest problems that are preventing any sincere reform from getting through at all.
But the best kept secret or the worst depending on how you look at it is the fact that this is based on a major false assumption. The corporate media has been telling the public that they have no choice if they want to have their vote count but to choose between the two candidates that have been selected by them or we would be “throwing away our vote” since third party candidates have no chance of winning or so they say.
This is one of the biggest lies that the corporate media has been telling the public for a long time and the moment the public stops believing this it will no longer be true!!

If the corporate media told you that “you shouldn’t consider voting for someone unless they take an enormous amount of bribes from people that have an agenda that blatantly contradicts your best interest or you would be throwing your vote away;” would you believe it?

Of course, they wouldn’t phrase it that way and if you want to get technical an argument could be made that this isn’t exactly what they’re implying with their actions; but it’s way too damn close even if it isn’t exactly right.

There is much more evidence to indicate the fact that Jill Stein has more support at the grass roots level than the corporate media has indicated from many of the protest movements that have been growing over the past year and that if more people rally behind her then she could expand that dramatically!

The corporate media is producing a propaganda operation that was probably as effective as anything the USSR has ever done but they have taken it to a bizarre extreme so that many more people almost certainly see that they have no credibility at all and that we should clearly look elsewhere for our political and educational material. Fortunately with the internet there are many other opportunities and many more people already realize this although more could benefit from learning about the news and educational outlets that are already available; which is why I have produced my own list of alternative news outlets for anyone that is interested, if it helps. It includes several additional lists of alternative news outlets at least one of which is much bigger and provides news all around the world. This is on a Wiki so that if you have any other suggestions you can add it yourself.

The ability of the corporate media to indoctrinate the public depends on the willingness of the public to accept them as their primary source of information; and that has already been shrinking for years.
I think that she clearly does have a chance but even if she doesn’t make it then it would be much better for her to make as strong a showing from the grass roots level as possible to show that the public is fed up with the corporate corruption of the political system and the fact that we aren’t going to continue believing their propaganda. If a third party candidate makes a strong showing then it could do much more to support future third party candidates.

Just as important is the fact that the political establishment has proven over and over again that every time we believe the lie about having to choose between the two corrupt candidates that they have selected for us the next president gets even worse than the last regardless of which party he is from!

When many of us supported Bill Clinton to defeat George HW Bush we thought we were getting the lesser of two evils or that we actually had a good candidates; when he gained power he did more to usher in the consolidation of the corporate media than any other president in history and he reformed the welfare system without reeling in corporate welfare. In fact corporate welfare continued to win. Then Bush came in and there was another anything but Bush movement that brought in Obama and he is doing many of the things that we thought we were getting rid of including predator drones and endless war. He is also doing what he can to hand over the control of the schools to the corporations and his health care wasn’t nearly as helpful as he led us to believe; assuming it helped at all. He didn’t do anything to reel in the corporate bureaucracy that could have been done with a single payer system as Jill Stein has indicated that she would support.

The latest revelation to indicate that the Obama administration is about a trade agreement that he opposed as a candidate but according to an article from Public Citizen, “After Two Years of Closed-Door Negotiations, Trans-Pacific Partnership Text Replicates Alarming Bush Trade Pact Terms That Obama Opposed as Candidate, and Worse.” This is just one more betrayals on top of many more that the Obama administration has attempted to pull over the public. Thanks to the fact that this has been revealed and is being distributed widely throughout the internet there is a good chance that he might back down, at least for a while, as he has on other issues in the past; however he, and other traditional candidates have a history of coming back and trying again to get as much as they can get away with through when the public calms down; and they often succeed.

How many times do we have to be fooled over and over again before we stop believing the same trick over and over again?

In fact in one issue after another Jill Stein takes a position that is more in line with the best interest of the majority of the public; and furthermore she also makes her position clear by letting us know what that position is when asked by sincere independent outlets like Project Vote Smart who has a questionnaire for presidential candidates as well as many other candidates for other offices; and they list all the candidates running unlike the corporate media which is trying to rig the elections for their own candidates.
Both Mitt Romney and Barack Obama have refused to respond to this!

If any job applicant in the corporate world was asked to fill out a job application and they refused that would be the end any chance they have of getting the job; yet this is the way the political establishment and the corporations expect us to choose our president! No company would allow the applicant to control the interview. Clearly the election of political officials should be done the same way or as close as possible until we can have a better system set up. In the long run this should involve major election reform but in the short term we should refuse to accept people that don’t fill out the job application!

Scott Walker has been presented recently as an indication that the Republicans have been gaining momentum and that they might be able to take advantage of it in November; however this ignore several things, including the fact that they made the mistake of falling back on the same incompetent democratic candidate in their rush to find anyone but Walker instead of putting all that grass roots effort to promote a candidate that wasn’t part of the traditional democratic establishment, which is being influenced by the same corporations that have been corrupting Scott Walker.

Another problem is that the public airwaves have been virtually hijacked by the corporate media as indicated in the following article:

Did Our Public Airwaves "Win" it for Walker?
Whatever questions remain about Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's recall election, there is no question that his campaign was built on big money, the likes of which we've never seen in a gubernatorial campaign before. And where did all that money go? Right into thin air -- our air.
And as owners of the air -- our public airwaves, to be precise -- there is plenty we can do to combat the corrosive effect of big money on our elections, by holding our partners in broadcasting, local TV and radio stations, accountable to the communities they serve. …. Full article

This is further indication that the public needs to take the initiative at the grass roots level to reform the system and one of the things that we need to do, as previously indicated, is to stop relying on the corporate media for our information; and no longer accepting the lie that we have to limit our choices to those pre-selected by the establishment that sells us out over and over again!

This should be considered further evidence of the fact that the Democratic party didn’t even make a sincere attempt to stand up to Scott Walker as indicated by Dave Lindorff.

Facing Facts in Wisconsin: Progressives and Workers Were Sold Out by Obama and the Democratic Party
There will be all kinds of dancing around the issue of why progressives lost the recall campaign against union-busting Tea Party Republican Gov. Scott Walker in Wisconsin on Tuesday, with the Obama campaign trying to claim that it was not a reflection on him or his popularity, the Democratic Party saying it was not their battle, and the labor movement, sadly, blaming it all on right-wing money. They’ll all be saying that it doesn’t matter, and that the important thing is to focus on helping Democrats win in November.

So let’s get it straight. The Wisconsin battle was hugely important -- an existential struggle for the US labor movement and working people in general, and a critical litmus test of the real nature of both President Obama and of the Democratic Party. And both the president and the party failed that test. Completely and deliberately.

Let’s first get rid of the false Big Money argument. The truth is that no amount of money can turn an election when the public is fired up over a cause or a candidate. What Big Money on one side of an issue or on behalf of one candidate can do is rally the people who are on that side, to get them out to the polls. On the margins, it might help sway a few undecided people who can be duped or scared, but this is of very limited help, because such people tend to be disinterested in politics and voting, so even if they are convinced by the propaganda, they are unlikely to turn out. That can only make a difference if the other side fails to get all its supporters out.

The progressives who battled mightily in this campaign may have been wildly outspent, but they were hardly without resources and they certainly managed to reach every potential supporter with their message of defending working people from Walker’s attack.

What they lacked was any significant support from the Democratic Party and the party’s standard-bearer, President Barack Obama -- the man who as candidate back in 2008, when he won Wisconsin, promised to put on a pair of “comfortable shoes” and to “walk the picket line” with struggling workers everywhere. Full Article

The Black Agenda Report makes a similar argument in Wisconsin: What Happens When Movements Turn Into Campaigns. Frankly as I indicated they shouldn’t have even chosen Tom Barrett; however even if you do accept the lesser of two evils argument barrack Obama and the rest of the democratic party could have done much more to stand up to Walker. It is hard to imagine what they could be trying to accomplish but it is clear that it isn’t in the best interest of the public and we shouldn’t accept their lies anymore. The problem may have been that they allowed the Democratic establishment to take control of the campaign, instead of keeping the control at the grass roots level. Ed Shultz did more to get crowds cheering in his show and appealing to emotions than he did to try to address many of the issues and there are almost certainly a lot of people that saw through that. In some case some appeal to emotion or motivational speeches are acceptable as long as they’re followed up by scrutiny but when that is all there is it is just demagoguery.

I usually prefer to encourage people to do more political activity at the grass roots level that involves discussion of the issues in a manner that enables people to control the message and I think the election process should be controlled by the public or perhaps organizations accountable to the public like Project Vote Smart. In this case I think they could use some improvement but that is beside the point for now. Jill Stein has been trying to collect enough money to qualify for matching funds to help get their message out. In the long run the system for matching funds probably should be reformed but for this election cycle it is the best we have so I hope some of you will consider the following request from the Jill Stein campaign:

We have until June 30 to qualify for federal matching funds. Every donation you make to Jill Stein for President, up to $250, can be matched dollar-for-dollar by public financing -- IF, and only if -- we get 20 states to qualify by June 30th. We have 10 states right now. Please donate now. (additional information at full article)

When looking at the numbers it seems like they have a long way to go; however I glanced at this just yesterday and I’m reasonably sure that it made surprising gains in just the past day and clearly Texas is going over the top soon which almost certainly wasn’t the case yesterday. There is a strong chance that they will make their target and get their funds if they receive additional support from either the states they highlighted or others which will also be matched in funds even if they aren’t the ones too put them over the top.
Once again if your interested in some of her positions on the issues a closer look at Jill Stein, and her positions on the issues, provides information from several sources including at least three independent organizations and her own web page.

The time to let them know that we’re not dumb enough to believe it anymore is long overdue!!

The alternative is that we buy every lie they hand to us and continue to pretend that we tried to do our part to reform the system by supporting the lesser evil who is guaranteed to sell us out!

The following are the original replies when this was first posted on Open Salon.

If only a 100o Fairies could sweep down from FairyLand with millions of pounds of Fairy Dust and throw it in all the voters eyes. If only Zackery my man~

scanner
June 15, 2012 01:15 PM

I'm not sure that voting for the Green Party is the best elect0ral tactic in 2012. I'm still mulling that one over. I am glad Jill Stein is out there raising issues that are largely shut out of the corporate media. One of these days there will be another major political re-alignment and people like Jill Stein and the Green Party will have contributed to that process.

Bob Simpson
June 16, 2012 12:42 AM

Six years ago, they were saying the same things about the New Zealand Green Party. We now poll around 15% - with Labour, the next largest party, polling in the mid-20s. What's even more amazing is that the media has started treating us as the official opposition. Because the Labour leadership is so weak, they come to our leaders for comments on what the National-led government is doing.

Dr Stuart Jeanne Bramhall
June 16, 2012 01:45 AM

Scanner, call me a fairy and wish me luck!

Bob, both these candidates are so pathetic I don’t see how you can do worse by voting for either one of them; if there is a better option it is presumably another third party candidate that has received little or no attention. Stuart is right if we accept their lie about choosing between these two candidates then we won’t have a chance of gradually or suddenly increasing opposition, despite all this protest; it will be for nothing.

I know there is going to be more that needs to be done but this could be part of it; and without another third party or alternative it should be. Is there a better alternative?

One of these days happens when we make it happen!

Dr Bramhall, hopefully we’ll follow suit!

zacherydtaylor
June 16, 2012 09:27 AM

The following just came in from the Stein campaign; it confirms what i thought I saw when I checked the results on two consecutive days; and it indicates that it may be even better. The page still hasn't been updated as of today since the 14th two days ago; I imagine these gains in these states will be reflected in a day or two. Whether or not they make it depends on how much people rally in the next two weeks; it isn't that much money and it can help a lot of grass roots operations which is cheaper than epidemic volumes of propaganda being purchased by Obama and Romney.

-------------------------------------------

We now have fifteen days to "Double Your Green" by June 30th by securing federal matching funds. Since Tuesday, when the Stein campaign launched its final push in the Double Your Green campaign (see video here), every target state has made progress, and five states have crossed key thresholds.

Good work D.C., Colorado, Connecticut, and Florida in closing in on the halfway mark! And Texas Greens have raised $2000 in just days, meaning that Texas needs just $400 to become our 11th qualifying state.

zacherydtaylor
June 16, 2012 09:45 AM

Liberal, Progressive, Labour or Green, "the politics of the fringe" as the media call it are compromised and subverted not so much by the dominant main stream parties, but by what I believe to be the hard wired brain chemistry of voters.

Twenty-five to thirty percent of human beings are driven by fear or the "selfish gene." Call them Conservative, Republicans, social Darwinists or bigots, they nonetheless fear change and search for someone to blame for their petty defeats and dominate in what they regard as the game of life.

About one third of voters understand the benefits of justice and fair play and are motivated not just to leave a better world for "their children" but for "all children." Progressive Dems, Socialists, Liberals, Labour, Greens, these people welcome change and view the world not so much as a competition but as an organic social continuum.

Elections are determined by those who remain: the 35 to 45% of any electorate who either don't vote because they feel it's all a bad joke, or who regard themselves as independent and above the fray. Most of these people are laying back, watching to see who's likely to win so they can associate themselves with the winning side of any contest, whether it's office politics, sports contests, elections or revolutionary or civil wars. Their brain chemistry is driven equally by fear and guile; with no core belief or value except that things will always change. To survive you need to keep your eyes open, never commit to action until you have no choice, then line up with the winner and scramble for the scraps and crusts... most of these folks never stopped wandering the savannah.

jmac1949
June 16, 2012 11:49 AM

Zachd!!! Bravo for you and for Stein. The little engine that could, the energizer bunny. God bless her!! A great pic, too. I need to donate more myself to Stein's campaign as well as writing more of her. Also take out those website directions to post a Stein video or two, luddite as I am.

The corporate strangulation hold on media awes to those of us awake enough to face it down. It is where the greatest threat lives to us becoming full out fascism, though soft fascism has hardened so far already thanks to both Bush and even more to Obama imho.

If only Nader had won in 2000! I am not kidding though that will probably make good progressives (like good Germans) insane as I say it.

But Jill Stein is part of that truth to power legacy. She has a stamina and a grace and an intelligence. A people person, a reformer, a grounded person not driven by ego but by conscience from what I can see. She visualizes a paradigm shift to partnership and cooperation away from mass murder and mass thievery, patriarchal sociopathic power and control and greed and competition obsessed winning is everything and hang the sanctity of human life gamesmanship.

I know I want to live out of the shadows. I am sad many of my fellows don't. But I will encourage as many as I can to move out of them. And ask "why not?", RFK's question, and not be wetblanketed by the patronizing commenters who explain why human beings will never rally to their higher selves. Times in history they have. Times in history they have succumbed to their lowest selves.

Take care, my friend. I was scanning the website tonight, eager to find yours. Well done!!!!

I read on a website, JILL STEIN, THE BEST PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE YOU'LL NEVER HEAR ABOUT! Time, and there is time, Louise Hay declares "the point of power is always in the present moment" to CHANGE THAT.

Sadly, at this point, to embrace the truth it will illuminate just how INSANELY EVIL things have been in the governance of this country. And how we as a citizenry have colluded and enabled. We must take the first step to acknowledging the unmanageability of it and take our own citizen-self responsibility and begin the climb up those 12 steps to recovery for our souls and the soul of our country.

best, libby!

libbyliberalnyc
June 17, 2012 01:02 AM

ps it really pisses me off when the lazy or obtuse or too cool for school go after the messengers for being "naive" and "idealistic" as if they are wasting their precious time having to begin to consider or God forbid to acknowledge the morality and decency we are asking for.

libbyliberalnyc
June 17, 2012 01:05 AM

Jmac, it may seem that way and there is some truth to it but I don’t think that is quite the way it is; or at least it doesn’t have to be that way if enough people try to change things. For better or worse the corporations have been taking things to a bizarre extreme; and this is the type of environment where reformers may have the greatest chance to gather an increasingly large percentage of the public and convince them to stop supporting the corporate status quo and learn about the issues and vote independent.

The corporate media and the political establishment have become so absurd that anyone paying attention has to have noticed something is wrong; we may only have to follow up on this and help inform more people about the issues to get them to switch parties and get their info from alternative media outlets that are actually trying to do a good job even if they don’t have enough resources.

Libby, I remember when Nader ran in 2000 and there was no doubt that he was better than Bush or Gore; but there were some problems with him that I found after a closer look. The biggest one that I can remember is the fact that he refused to fill out his Vote Smart questionnaire at the time which I thought was suspicious for starters from someone that claimed to want to reform things. At the time my favorite was John Hagelin who did fill out his questionnaire and provided much more information on his own web site so that the public could know where he stood.

The corporate media completely ignored him while giving Nader and Buchanan a minimum amount of coverage and portrayed them as “fringe” which clearly means that Nader and Hagelin weren’t in their pocket. Ironically Buchanan was to a large part in their pocket but they may have done this to confuse the issues.

There was something about Hagelin that I was a little skeptical about but Jill Stein doesn’t have that problem, as far as I can tell; but, for what it is worth, there is still more I would like to know about her; although what I do know is enough to determine she is much better than the corporate clowns.

Also for what it’s worth some of the people that were previously supporting the argument that they had to vote for the lesser evil have changed their position; I know because in 1992 I was one of them and I’m not the only one that has come around to realize it won’t work.